Other books that might interest you

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  The Hungarian Who Walked to...

  Edward Fox

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  This is a delightful short biography of an eccentric Hungarian scholar who became one of the fathers of Western studies of the Tibetan language and culture. Educated at an austere Calvinist school until aged 31 where he demonstrated exceptional skills as a linguist, Csoma de Korös (1784-1842) finally set out alone on a pilgrimage to the East. His personal mission was to discover the roots of the Hungarian people, whom he and others of the time theorized to be descended from Attila the Hun. 
   
  Due to a Chinese decree restricting foreign entry to Tibet he was sadly never to reach Yarkand in the Western plains of China, where he hoped to find linguistic proof of the Central Asian origins of the Hungarian race. However on his way, via many adventures, misfortunes and disguises, he expanded his repertoire to as many as 14 languages and became one of the first Europeans to enter Ladakh, Tibetan in language and culture, but politically part of India. Supported by the British vet and superintendent of the East India Company's Stud, William Moorcroft, Csoma was encouraged to use his extraordinary facility for languages to learn Tibetan, (largely unknown in the West), and produce the first English-Tibetan dictionary. He studied with Lama Sangye Phuntsog in a remote monastery in Zanskar. For 16 months the two men studied the Tibetan language and its vast religious canon in austere freezing conditions in a tiny nine-foot square cell. The fruits of this arduous but pioneering effort, the first reliable grammar and dictionary of Tibetan, was finally published in two volumes in 1834 - using a Tibetan font that had to be specially made. Csoma spent the last years of his life working for the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, mastering Marathi, Bengali and Sanskrit, before dying of malaria on a final courageous attempt to travel across Tibet to Western China. Csoma’s life-story and achievements gradually became known in Hungary, and he is now a revered national figure. A fascinating little book.

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  From Harvey River - A Memoir of...

  Lorna Goodison

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  "Throughout her life my mother [Doris] lived in two places at once: Kingston, Jamaica, where she raised a family of nine children, and Harvey River, in the parish of Hanover, where she was born and grew up."In the tradition of Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family and Carlos Eire's Waiting for Snow in Havana comes Lorna Goodison's luminous memoir of her forebears—From Harvey River. When Doris' English grandfather, William Harvey, discovers a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of those running from slavery, he gives his name to what will become his family's home for generations. For Doris, Harvey River is the place she always called home, the place where she was one of the "fabulous Harvey girls" and where the rich local bounty of the land went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties and comforts of her parents' house. It is a place she will return to in dreams when her fortunes change, years later, and she and her husband, Marcus Goodison, relocate to "hard life" Kingston and encounter the harsh realities of urban living in close quarters as they raise their family of nine children.In lush prose, Lorna Goodison weaves memory and island lore to create a vivid, universally appealing tapestry.

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  Random Thoughts for a Friday...

  Kathryn L. Hunter

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  This engaging collection of essays was originally published in The Daily Post Athenian newspaper during the tumultuous 2-year period of 2020-2021. The author, Kathryn L. Hunter, who holds a masters degree in Forestry from Yale University, deftly weaves natural science with social commentary into each article, creating a result that is both entertaining and wise.

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  Myself with Others - Selected...

  Carlos Fuentes

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  In Myself with Others, Fuentes has assembled essays reflecting three of the great elements of his work: autobiography, love of literature, and politics.  They include his reflections on his beginning as a writer, his celebrated Harvard University commencement address, and his trenchant examinations of Cervantes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Borges.

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  On Hitler's Mountain -...

  Irmgard A. Hunt

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  A German woman recounts her youth during World War II under Hitler’s regime in this “richly texture memoir” (Publishers Weekly). 
   
  Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden—just steps from Adolf Hitler’s alpine retreat—Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war—and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime—aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in. 
   
  In May 1945, an eleven-year-old Hunt watched American troops occupy Hitler’s mountain retreat, signaling the end of the Nazi dictatorship and World War II. As the Nazi crimes began to be accounted for, many Germans tried to deny the truth of what had occurred; Hunt, in contrast, was determined to know and face the facts of her country’s criminal past. 
   
  On Hitler’s Mountain is more than a memoir—it is a portrait of a nation that lost its moral compass. It is a provocative story of a family and a community in a period and location in history that, though it is fast becoming remote to us, has important resonance for our own time.

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  To Cancer with Love - Diary of a...

  Taryn Claire Le Nu

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  After her own diagnosis, Taryn Claire soon discovered that people craved an understanding and awareness into the nitty gritty details that come with a cancer sojourn. Everyone was curious and interested in what was happening behind closed doors.She started a Facebook group to keep her close family and friends abreast of what was happening, and the group grew to include the support posse of others traversing the cancer countryside, seeking information for how to best support their loved ones.One in eight women in Australia are diagnosed with breast cancer and yet its barely talked about in a frank and direct way. Statistically, someone near and dear to you will go through cancer in some capacity at some point in time, and you will find yourself at the coalface.  Taryn Claire gives permission to be a voyeur into her voyage, through a series of diary entries that sparkle with humour, warmth and honesty.

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